The Edge of Tonight
by xSeshatx
Summary: {Oneshot} Nobody expected that the first time Peter called Tony "dad" would be because Tony was blown out of the sky (Part 7 of the Peter Parker: Future Hearts series)


It wasn't often that the Avengers were needed outside of the United States. It was even less often than the entire team was required. And it was almost unheard of for the them to be needed on a Friday night which meant that Peter wouldn't be missing any school by joining them on a weekend adventure.

Peter had nothing else to do with his weekend and it barely even began yet. He had gotten home from school about two hours prior, ate more than was probably needed for him, and had finished all of his homework. He didn't plan on going on patrol until after dinner, so in the meantime he was laying upside down on the couch watching Law and Order. It was a very uneventful day up from the time he woke up all the way to the time Friday alerted him that there was a call to assemble and he was welcomed to join in.

Obviously, he grabbed his bookbag from its current position on the floor and ran to the elevator to see wherever Friday would end up taking him because there was no way he was turning down a chance to join the Avengers on a mission. Instead of taking him up to the top of the Tower where the quinjet would be prepared to take them somewhere, she took him to Tony's lab, where the man was already standing at the elevator doors. "Figured you'd be eager to join," Tony said, walking into the elevator before Friday began their ascent. "We don't know all the details just yet, but the Avengers have been requested somewhere in Europe. Shouldn't take longer than two days. If it does, be prepared to be sent back here for school. Are we understood?"

"Yes, sir," Peter said with a salute, earning an eyeroll from Tony.

"Rules still apply overseas: if I say move, you move. If I tell you to hide, you hide. If I tell you to run away, you run away. We still on the same page?"

"Yes, Tony," Peter said, this time with much exaggeration. "Everything that goes when we work in New York together is going to carry on to wherever we're going. Oh! But we're definitely going out of our way to get a souvenir, right? Because I've only ever left the country once, you know, and I didn't have time to get anything to remember it bye."

Tony opened his mouth to speak, paused, and then cocked his head to the side. "I guess I haven't taken you on any trips," he said.

Immediately, Peter tried to backtrack. "I didn't mean it like that, like, it's cool that I haven't went anywhere, of course. It's just, like, if I'm not, you know, in America, then that's cool, but if I am, that's cool, too. I don't need to go to other countries, but if I am in other countries, maybe sometimes a souvenir would be cool. Not that I'm expecting you to get me anything from any country either, but, um…"

By the time Peter trailed off, the elevator ride was over and Tony was smirking at him. "I know what you meant, kid. It's _cool._" Was he mocking him? He was definitely mocking him. "It just hadn't occurred to me that I hadn't taken you anywhere. I leave the continent all the time, as you know, but it's usually quick trips that I never thought about letting you tag along to. I guess I could change that. Next business trip I have to take when you're not in school, I'll save a spot on the plane for you."

Beaming, Peter thanked him, but the conversation had to end because they were now with the rest of the Avengers who were all dressed for a mission. "Sorry it took so long," Peter said, knowing how some members of the team felt about punctuality, namely Steve and Natasha, but neither looked upset. "You know Tony; he had to explain all the rules I have to follow. Could you say boring?"

At the displeased look that crossed Tony's face, Steve smirked. "He's worse than me, I think," he said. "Hey, kid, you ever been to Serbia?"

"Oh! I know where that is!" he exclaimed excitedly. At the amused glances, he toned it down. "I mean, I, uh, that was one of the countries I always misplaced when learning geography. It took me until the final test to stop mixing it up with Bulgaria."

Natasha fixed him with her standard 'he's so adorable but I'm a kickass spy who can't show love for things, oh, but I wish I could' look and his smile only grew. "Let's get on the ship and head to Bulgaria. Oops. I meant Serbia." The flat, monotone voice she used only confirmed that her mix up was intentional.

He changed into his Spider-Man suit once they took off before they all started discussing what danger they were up against. Mud Monsters, they had been dubbed, and after seeing footage of them, it wasn't hard to see why. The problem was that that the mud acted more like stereotypical quicksand and would literally swallow people whole. They knew this because when the Mud Monsters moved on, there was nothing left in the spot that the human had previously been. They moved quicker than anything larger than eight feet should really have the right to, added along with the fact that they were a good three feet wide in any direction. They were treating them as a lethal threat. With good reason. The anxiety coming off of Tony could almost be considered tangible.

The anxiety was well placed. Ten minutes into the battle and things had been moving nicely. As nicely as any fight with Mud Monsters could go, at least. There hadn't been any more civilian casualties, only a few injuries, and nobody on the team had taken any overly-painful hit. That was, until someone finally did. The first person to get knocked down was Steve, but he was up on his feet again in a matter of seconds. Peter had watched him go down from a distance. It looked painful. Wanda had a close run in with one of the Mud Monsters. She got away from it in a hurry, using her powers to create a forcefield around herself as she scurried backwards. That one, as opposed to Steve's incident, Peter had been able to swing in to help. He shot a few webs at the monster, mostly aiming to annoy rather than actually fight, because he wanted its attention on him instead of Wanda.

Things started getting dangerous when Tony announced an unknown mechanical device on the backs of all the Mud Monsters. After a few minutes trying to blast one down, he succeeded and moved in to investigate. He barely touched it when the entire device exploded in his hands. The blast was small enough not to cause much damage to anything around him, but Tony got the full blast of it. No matter how high-tech and reliable his suit was, an explosion of that force from that close proximity was going to do some damage.

"Dad!" Peter had shouted, not realizing which word had escaped his mouth as he swung over in a hurry. Tony was unmoving on the ground with holes in parts of his suit as the explosion destroyed a good part of it. Peter landed only a couple of feet away from Tony before running the short distance to him and collapsing on the ground. He reached for the emergency release switch only to discover that it had been jammed. The thing was already hard enough to get off, created to be so difficult so it wasn't ever accidentally jarred, but this was ridiculous. If he pulled too hard, he'd break the entire thing and still fail to get the suit off. Instead, he worked on physically ripping the mask off of Tony's face. He didn't have time to be surprised at just how strong he was when he tried. Instead, he rested a hand over where Tony's chest would be and gave him a shake. "Dad? Dad, please, wake up. Please."

He was begging, he knew he was, and then the tears started as he did. He checked for a pulse, finding a faint one, but Tony still wasn't waking up. Blood dripped down the side of his temple and when Peter noticed that, his crying got worse. All of a sudden, his Spidey senses began going crazy. He turned around and saw one of the Mud Monsters approaching him. He raised himself up to a crouching position and set out taser web after taser web, hoping for the best. Thankfully, despite the fact that it was almost completely _mud_, it was still mildly affected by the shock which allowed him to send a web grenade in its direction to contain it. Barely a moment after he sent out the web grenade, Steve appeared in front of them with his shield up. "You need to move him," Steve commanded. "I know you're scared, and I'm sorry, but you need to do it. Hurry up, head to the jet. Get to safety. Get him to safety. Move."

Peter wasted no time. He jumped up, lifting Tony effortlessly over his shoulders, and running in the direction of the quinjet which had been parked multiple blocks away from the main battle. He set him down as carefully as possible onto one of the many hospital beds sitting around before pulling off more of his suit, all the while still crying and asking for him to wake up. "Karen – I, I don't know what to do," he said, realizing that shaking Tony awake would do nothing.

"Yes, you do," Karen's calm voice said. "What do you do when you have an injury?"

He was in no mood for her guidance. He wanted answers without having to work or think for them simply because he could barely think. He couldn't waste time by arguing, though. "I scan for injuries. Karen, can you get in contact with Fri and have her scan for injuries?"

There was never going to be a time that Peter was not eternally grateful for the fact that Bruce and Hulk were close enough to be considered almost friends. Hulk had been out there in battle with them, but now Bruce was running into the quinjet with his Hulk-proof pants and looking disheveled. When Peter saw Bruce, he ripped his mask off and let it drop to the ground because a doctor was there to help Tony which meant Peter didn't need to pretend to be a doctor. He grabbed one of Tony's still-suited up hands and squeezed, holding it up to his own face. Bruce must have saw because he paused long enough to give a reassuring smile. "Tony's been through worse. It may look bad, but he's a strong guy."

"Please wake up," Peter whispered, speaking into Tony's metal hand. It was as if Bruce had never spoken. Because Peter knew the odds of losing both of your parents, and then your uncle who was your guardian, and then your aunt who was your guardian were very, _very_ slim. Which meant that he had the worst luck. Which meant that Tony's life was in even _more_ danger. So, yeah, reassurance wouldn't help until Tony himself was doing the reassuring. "Please, dad, please. I can't, I can't do this again. Please, I love you."

There was no emergency evacuation which meant that Bruce didn't think Tony was dying. It seemed like the force of the blast just knocked Tony out, gave him a concussion, and only slightly punctured the open areas of his body. _Slightly_, Bruce said, as if _anything_ foreign sticking into Tony's body wasn't worthy of a medical evac. Still, despite how scared he was for Tony, he understood that Bruce knew best. So, when Bruce left to join the battle again after finishing up cleaning the wounds and getting the rest of the suit off with the help of Peter, Peter didn't argue. He also didn't join battle again himself. He instead crawled onto the bed beside a suitless Tony and kept tight hold of his hand.

It was when the Mud Monsters started duplicating that things became more difficult. Peter only had a few seconds to make a decision, but he did so with a sob. Some things were going to be bigger than he and Tony. He knew he had to look at the bigger picture, no matter how much it hurt him to do so. He rolled off of the bed and ran to the command area after picking up his mask. He placed his gloved hand over the identification system, granting himself access. "Friday? You're on here, too, right?"

"Certainly."

"Can you autopilot this thing without Tony on board?"

A pause, and then a reluctant. "If that is what you request me to do."

"How long will it take you to fly this to New York and back?"

"It would take four hours total."

Peter briefly considered the math, shocked at how fast the quinjet could move, but he did know that the quinjet was faster than the fastest fighter jet, so it made sense. He pulled his mask on to talk to the rest of the team. "You guys think the fight will finish in less than four hours."

"Probably, but it'll be close," Hawkeye answered. "Why? How's Stark?"

Turning off the com, Peter spoke again to Friday. "Will you be able to send one of his suits to get him off the jet when you land in New York, send him to medical, and bring the jet back here?"

"I can," Friday said. "Are you certain you're okay with this?"

"I'm not," Peter said, taking a shaky breath. "But, Bruce thinks he's okay, and the team could use an extra hand…I need to go do this. But can you, like, connect to my suit and give me updates? Let me know if something isn't going okay?" If something were to happen, he'd be too far away to do anything about it but knowing would be better than showing up in New York with Tony…well, gone.

"I will alert you to any changes. You're being very brave, Peter."

He couldn't respond to that. He knew he was acting in a way that might come off brave, but inside he was losing his mind. He gave the verbal command to send Tony back to the States as soon as Peter stepped off the ship, and then he gave one last visit to Tony. "I'm sorry," he whispered. He rested his head briefly on top of Tony's chest before straightening his back and running off the ship. It flew away behind him. He never looked back.

The first person who looked over at him once Spider-Man rejoined the battle and started taking out the Mud Monsters was Bucky. He had a knowing look on his face and gave Peter a nod before turning away. These new Mud Monsters (he really needed to find a better name to give them rather than what the news outlets went with, because seriously?) that had come out of the old ones didn't have the same device strapped to them. Karen had informed him of that and he informed the rest of the team of that. He wished that Rhodey had been able to join them. At least they'd still have one Iron Man suit even if the Iron Man suit was really War Machine (because it definitely wasn't the Iron Patriot). Now, aside from Sam and Vision, Peter was mostly alone in the air, and Sam couldn't engage with the explosives because his suit wasn't all that protecting.

Peter went after the creatures with the bombs, leaving the bombless ones for the members of the team without super strength or super healing like Clint, Sam, Wanda, and Natasha. He saw that Hulk, Steve, Vision, and Bucky were all going after the ones with bombs, too, so everybody had the same idea and were on the same page. Maybe they had already declared that strategy while Peter had yet to rejoin them. Using his webs, Peter tried encasing the bombs in the hopes that they would contain the blast if it went off. After the first attempt at this, he discovered that it most definitely didn't contain the blast, but at least it brought the monster it was attached to down.

"Someone has to be controlling these things," Natasha said. "Steve, what do you say? You and I go find the person behind this and shut it down."

"Go," Bucky said, answering for Steve. "We'll handle this."

Hawkeye took a hard hit from the top of a shorter building and he started freefalling for a moment. One of the creatures had swiped him away with its arm, thankfully not eating him, but still causing him to fall. He watched Clint save himself from the full brunt of the fall with his quick thinking and his endless supply of arrows, though he still hit the ground a little hard. Peter shot out a web, swinging over in his direction to keep the monster occupied while Clint took his time getting up. "Kid," Hawkeye said, "why'd you send the quinjet away?"

"You guys needed help, but so did Tony," Peter answered. "I couldn't do both. Friday is flying him back to New York."

"How bad is it?"

"Bruce didn't seem too worried, so he should survive the flight back without much trouble. Medical will be waiting for him when he arrives."

"Smart thinking," Clint said. "Are _you_ okay?"

"No," Peter replied, but he didn't elaborate. Instead, seeing as how Clint was back on his feet, he swung away and started fighting some of the monsters hand-to-hand because webs weren't doing much at the moment.

It took Steve and Natasha only a little more than three hours to figure out what was happening. They hacked into security systems, looked through old camera footage, and followed leads to get to the bottom of it. Solving a mystery in that short amount of time was impressive for anybody. The people in the battle weren't really hurt, but everybody was tired and a little sore. When they took one down, another one would duplicate to make up for the loss. It seemed like each new monster was a little bit bigger and a little bit stronger, but at least they stopped eating people.

All it took was Natasha and Steve to pull one switch to shut down the monsters. The man behind the creatures was captured. Citizens ran from hiding and began shouting thanks to the Avengers in a language that most of them couldn't understand. Peter got in contact with Friday again, stepping away from everybody to do so. He had gotten alerted that the quinjet had landed over an hour before and that medical personnel were looking Tony over. He had yet to come to, had a few scans, and it was concluded that he just had one hell of a concussion and a few broken ribs. They'd know more about his brain when he woke up, but the scans looked clean. "Friday? What's the ETA on that jet?"

"About thirty minutes," she answered. "Boss is still unconscious. There have been no updates as of yet. I am keeping a close eye on him."

"Thanks," he said, and because the battle was over, he slid down the side of a half-destroyed wall and cried. Since his mask was on, civilians wouldn't be able to tell, but he knew that the rest of the team would know.

Surprising nobody, Bucky was the one who came over to sit beside him. He wrapped his arm around Peter's shoulders and just sat there. "He's gonna be okay," Bucky said after a short few minutes of silence as Peter tried and failed to stifle his sobs. "I know you probably don't believe that given your bad history, but this time, he will be."

"I just – I can't lose him. I can't."

"You called him dad."

Peter paused at that, already going back through his memories to remember what it was he said exactly, but he was coming up short. "I did?"

"When that bomb went off. You shouted 'dad'. Steve said you were still calling him dad when you were trying to wake him up. Have you ever called him that before?"

He shook his head no. "If he does wake up, can we not tell him about that? I don't want to make him uncomfortable or anything."

Bucky nudged his shoulder with his own shoulder. "He's going to wake up. He adopted you a year ago. He _is_ your dad. He's not going to get uncomfortable with the fact that you've called him that. He'd probably just cry – the sap."

Forced laughter was even hard to muster, and Bucky pulled him in closer. "I know injuries happen to all of us," Peter started saying, "but it's never been so…so scary before. He's taken hits, but not like that. Not when I'm there to see it. I don't think he's ever _not_ been awake when he makes it to medical. I don't think he's ever just _not_ been awake, at least when I'm around."

"You did good today. You were scared, yet you pulled through. You made the decision to send Tony to get medical aid while you stayed here and fought, which, honestly, this fight probably would have went on a lot longer if you weren't here."

Peter rolled his eyes at the praise. "Steve and Natasha shut it down."

"Yeah, but if you weren't here, we would have needed Steve. It's nice, having backup supers in case one of us gets preoccupied." It was a joke again, but Peter smiled naturally at that. "As I was saying, you made the tough decision to stay here when you really wanted to be with Tony. Not everybody could have been that mature about it. When you were down and out a while ago, Tony nearly lost his mind. He flew you back for help right away, not even pretending to think about staying around. Not that it was a bad thing either way, of course, but it takes a certain kind of strength to push through something like this when someone you love is hurt."

He thought back to when May died and he fought with the Avengers before telling Tony what had happened. He thought back to pulling on a hoodie and sneaking out the night of Ben's murder with no plan on how to look for the killer yet trying to anyways. "It's a little easier when Spider-Man and Peter are separate," he eventually said.

The fly back home was a long one and Peter sat still aside from bouncing his knee the entire ride. He was done talking, done listening, done doing anything that wasn't waiting to see Tony. Nobody tried to force him to talk which was nice, and Bucky didn't leave his side. Once the jet landed, Peter was running inside and to medical as fast as he could. Despite the long battle, he wasn't short on speed or energy. Halfway there, he cursed and changed his course of direction to his room so he could throw on clothes overtop of his Spider-Man suit. The doctors would understand why Peter Parker was so torn up about Tony; they wouldn't understand why Spider-Man was.

When he caught sight of Tony, there was nothing spectacular about him. He seemed as if he was just asleep. The side of his forehead had a rough-looking bruise, but aside from that, he looked relatively normal. Still, seeing him did start the tears up again. He sat on the chair next to the bed, holding Tony's hand as tight as he could without hurting him further. "Tony? I know you don't sleep as much as you're supposed to, but six hours a little excessive, don't you think?" he asked, hoping that speaking to him would help him wake up. "Everybody says you're probably okay, but I'm not convinced. I won't be until you wake up, so can you do that for me, please?"

At some point, Peter had fallen asleep. He remembered crying, he remembered laying his head down on Tony's bed, and he remembered crying some more. He also remembered waking up but falling asleep was not planned. He woke up to the feeling of someone running their fingers through his hair. His head shot up, looking at Tony just to find the man already looking at him. "Dad!" he shouted, jumping out of his seat and hugging Tony tight. Not for the first time that day, the word 'dad' slipped out of his mouth, but it was the first time he knowingly let it happen. The tears started up again as Tony's arms wrapped around Peter. "I was so worried," Peter was crying. "You took the full blast, and then you weren't waking up, but Bruce dehulked to look at you and said you seemed fine, and I trust his word, but it's hard to be optimistic when everybody I love dies, and I was so scared you'd be next."

During Peter's hysteric ranting, Tony tightened his hug. "Relax, kiddo. I'm okay." He'd be lying if he said he wasn't also crying, though for a different reason than Peter was. _He called me dad_.

"Now I know how you feel whenever I go on patrol," Peter said, laughing a little bit as he tried to push the sadness away now that he saw Tony would be fine. It was hard because all he wanted to do was scream to get out all of that excess emotion.

"Get up here," Tony said, pulling away from the hug just the help Peter up onto the bed. "Sleeping in that chair is going to be horrible for your back. And your neck. And your head. And probably the rest of your body, too."

After some more talking and a little more crying on Peter's part, he eventually fell asleep, leaving Tony awake. He just watched Peter sleeping for a short amount of time before someone walked into the room. Seeing it was Clint, he gave a nod of acknowledgement. "Did he tell you what happened?" he asked Tony.

"No," Tony said, automatically suspicious and worried because he knew Clint wasn't asking about the bomb. "You can fill me in, though."

Clint leaned against a counter directly across from the hospital bed and folded his arms. "He saw the blast, saw you go down. His reaction messed us up a little, I have to admit. It's easy to forget Spider-Man and Peter are the same person because it's hard to imagine a kid like Peter being more than just the nerdy teenager we all know him as."

"It was that bad?"

"In a way. He kept a cool head." At Tony's raised eyebrow, Clint elaborated. "He yelled for you when you went down, and he went for you. When one of those _things_ came up on you two, he was still able to manage fighting it whilst losing his mind _and_ taking care of you. Steve feels a little bad for how he handled the situation: he had to use his mean ol' 'Captain Red-White-and-Blue' voice to get Peter to get the two of you to safety after he stepped in to help him take the thing down. Bruce checked on you, said you weren't too hurt, and came back as Hulk. After a few minutes, things got pretty bad out there for all of us. Pretty sure Pete saw it because he joined us a minute later. Apparently, he sent the quinjet back to the States to drop you off. Still helped us fight. No drastic moves, so panicked fighting. He was still pretty torn up about it, but kid really stepped up. Stuck to Bucky the whole way home, though. He cried a lot."

It took all of Tony's willpower not to sigh. "The kid is pretty incredible, isn't he? It worries me that he was able to step back in the fight so quickly. It's like he's seen so much that he's just…resigned, I guess is the right word."

Clint looked confused for a second but then nodded. "You two work so well together that sometimes I don't remember he hasn't been here since the start. You think he's preparing to be orphaned again?"

"I hadn't even officially adopted him before he started worrying about losing me next," Tony admitted. "I don't know if I ever told any of you this, but that first mission we went on without Peter after I adopted him was really hard for him. He lost it with Pepper. She had to call me while we were fighting so I can calm him down. He's expecting the worst. It's happened so often that he's not exactly wrong for banking on the bad luck."

The two of them stared at each other for a long minute before Clint broke first and looked at the ground. "He called you dad. When you went down. Figured you'd want to know that."

Tony didn't know that, of course, but he did know that Peter had called him 'dad' when he woke up. Still, the fact that the first time Peter called him 'dad' was in the middle of a panic when Tony could have died _really_ made his heart hurt. He finally let out that sigh, reaching a hand up from around Peter to rest on top of his head. "I'm sorry, kid," he said quietly despite the fact that Peter had long since fallen asleep. "I wish I could assure you that I'm here forever."


End file.
